Monday, 3 March 2014

Jolla Sailfish app development: LUT Code Camp

[Article under edit]
February 24. - 28.2014 Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) arranged an open Sailfish OS coding week for their students

Comments from LUT and Jolla after the cource to be added later. Hopefully some information about the apps developed will be included too.
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February 24-28, 2014 Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) arranged an open Sailfish OS coding week

Lappeenranta University of Technology arranged a week-long intensive course Code Camp to computer science students. Cource included teamwork to design and build software for the finnish mobile phone company Jolla's new Sailfish operating system.

The course started on Monday, February 24 with the theory and ended on Friday, February 28 with a playful competition which took place between the students, judged by the teachers and representatives from Jolla. Jolla also lend 3 devices to the students for a month, enabling them to get familiar with it and have a deeper insight to the development.

"There is a strong win-win situation for both our students and the business guests, as the company (Jolla) may introduce software platforms for future programmers, and students and staff (LUT) will have the opportunity to explore the company's fresh technology first-hand," says junior researcher Antti Knutas.

Code Camp cource offered the basics of just finalized Sailfish operating system. Then, students developed applications utilizing the skills learned. In-depth learning of practices, and the details and good practices could be found on their own and the team's doing.

"Code Camp aimed at achieving the same team working atmosphere which is needed in working life. At the same time a recent technology is learned. Previously, we have taken courses on web, tablet and game programming, and now the smartphone programming," explains Knutas.

Technical expertise of the course was offered Jolla by the company's technical expert Pami Ketolainen and interest group coordinator Alberto Martinez.

"The new operating system is investing on easy user experience. Sailfish operating system works with gestures and a person can at the same time to do many things, e.g. to download a file at the same time as the user chats, writes e-mail, uses Skype or plays a silent game," says Martinez who participates in a course on Tuesday.

"Initial Special features include the fact that there are no solid buttons, but the phone is used with gestures. Users can run several programs at the same time and use the applications via so-called shrunked icons [translator's note: active covers]," Knutas explains.